


Take Me To Church

by Ghostinthehouse



Series: The Angel's Bookshop [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: HIV/AIDS Crisis, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi, Pining, Queer Guardian Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 13:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20507540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: Funerals and Weddings and Community(For others, but not for the Ineffable duo)





	1. 1989

"Angel! You ready yet?" calls a voice, as a skinny red-haired man in black strides into the shop.

Mr Fell's face lights up at the sight, despite the sunglasses hiding the other man's eyes. "Crowley!" and the handful of people clustered around the battered armchairs look at each other.

They're pretty sure they know why someone paired up with a man gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitous oxide would be so painfully thin, and not enough elders are left to tell them that Crowley's looked like that for as long as anyone can remember. They're pretty sure what the end result will be too. Each time they slip round to Fell's, they half expect him to be organising a funeral or in need of comfort (and often he is, but not because of his partner).

None of them talk about the times they hid in his back room while he walked out of his shop to defend them in any way necessary, or the righteous fury that cascaded off him when he did so, but they recognise the look in each other's eyes at the memory. Neither do they talk about the way that when he treats them, people survive beatings that should have been fatal.

He's been here for them forever. They want to be there for him if they can, and someone checks on Mr Fell and his shop at least once a week. And years turn, and lives turn, and every funeral has at least one mourner. Nobody in Mr Fell's orbit goes to their last rest alone these days, and they love him for it.

None of them will say that they love Crowley too, but then they also don't talk about the times he found them a safe place, or "acquired" the documentation they needed, or guided them through finding clothes that work for both their gender and their body. Nor that Crowley is the sword to Mr Fell's shield, clearing away danger and red tape with equal recklessness. (Don't thank him, the word goes, and don't praise him. Do trust him when it matters.)

Crowley is all menace and action and sharpened tongue where Mr Fell is safety and stability and comfort, and both are more than they seem at first glance. It's Crowley who provides an endless supply of clean needles, and Mr Fell who gives the supply a position in his shop where it can always be found. (Somehow, the shop always seems to be open when you really need something rather than just casually dropping by.)

Mr Fell is the person to turn to to discuss the what of things (what do I do, what can I find, what happens now) but if you want to talk about the why of things in any depth at all, they know to turn to Crowley instead. He may not know either, but he doesn't fob them off with "ineffable". He thinks, and he questions, and he coils himself around the edges of the community, where Mr Fell is a central pillar, less visible, but no less important to both the community, and to Mr Fell himself.


	2. 2005

Lily tangled her fingers with Sam's and felt her lover's hand squeeze reassuringly back as they stood side by side in A. Z. Fells. "We're getting married. Well, civil partnered. And we wondered..." Lily looked hopefully at Mr Fell.

"That's delightful, my dears. Congratulations!"

Lily hurriedly blurted the rest out. "We wondered if you would walk me down the aisle."

He blinked a little at that, and then his beaming smile returned. "It would be an honour, dears, but are you sure you don't have anyone else?"

Sam shook her head. "Our birth families don't want us, and we don't want them," she said, and he nodded in apparent understanding. "And you've been like a father to us for years - decades even. We owe a lot to both you and Crowley, but we weren't sure Crowley would want to be involved in a, uh, ceremony." She added hurriedly, "It isn't in a church, it's in an office and nothing religeous is even allowed in there, but, well, you know what he's like."

"Let me get this straight," Crowley said later, when Aziraphale broached the subject over wine. "They aren't allowed anything religeous in this ceremony, so they asked a literal angel and demon to take part?" He threw his head back and fairly cackled. "Oh this I must see."

It's the first time Aziraphale does it, but by no means the last. There's a steady trickle of older couples who want him involved in some way and he's usually happy to oblige. He would much rather, he confides to Crowley once over too much wine, attend a stream of weddings than of funerals. He's done too much of the latter over the last couple of decades and it's good to have a change. Not that either requires anything more ethereal than just him being there, no miracles to draw Heaven's attention in any way, but the grief drains him sometimes.

The registrars find him a familiar face, middle-aged, unassuming, friendly, popular for no obvious reason, and it becomes a familiar routine for them. A beautiful vintage Bentley will pull up outside the office. Mr Fell will emerge from the front passanger seat, open the back door for the ones getting married, and walk them in on his arm. The red-haired chauffeur will take the car away to park it and later slip in to sit on the back row until the ceremony is complete. Oddly enough, ceremonies that involve Mr Fell always seem to run perfectly smoothly.

It's for one of the later ceremonies, when Crowley's alone with the couple, helping them with the hellishness of clothes-shopping for it, that one of the brides asks if he and Mr Fell are ever going to be the happy couple instead of the helpers.

"Ngk. Yeah, well, no, unlikely." There's a bitter twist to Crowley's mouth, a hunger for something out of his reach. "Not safe for us to be - more than we are."

"Family stuff?" the bride-to-be asks.

He hisses a long sigh through his teeth and nods. "If my people got word of it, things would rapidly result in Hell on earth, and his people are religious like you wouldn't believe, so..." Crowley offers an eloquent shrug and leaves the rest to human imagination.


End file.
